Bonum Certa Men Certa

The EPO Still Wastes Public Money on Publicity Stunts and 'Reputation Management' Campaigns

Escaping a crisis by bribing and attacking the media

Escape key



Summary: The European Patent Office (EPO) is misusing public funds to manufacture self-congratulatory publicity for itself whilst attacking those who write negative commentary

THE publicity stunts from the EPO are not shocking to us. We already know that the EPO wastes a lot of public money on paid placements ('articles') which disgrace scientific publications (fake staff testimonials), not to mention how the EPO wasted money to harass the press and its very own staff (real staff, not fake staff).



"EPO management has the pervasive illusion of omnipotence; its behaviour proves that it thinks it can do whatever it wants."In an effort to deal with some core issues Merpel looks into the financial state of the EPO, whose management likes to pretend self-sufficiency (rather than exploitation of taxpayers as unwilling subsidisers, often directly harmed by the EPO's actions).

"Having been returned to blogging duty," Merpel refers to herself as a third person (as usual), she "has turned her attention to the finances of the European Patent Office. She wrote about this last year, examining the 2013 financial report of the EPO, and concluded that it was not possible to establish with any confidence, or in any degree of detail, what the true financial position actually is."

Merpel's colleague Darren Smyth has meanwhile slammed this latest EPO publicity stunt, which it calls "European Inventor Award". Smyth writes:

Whatever the European Inventor Award is, it is certainly not "to grant European patents". So this Kat's first gripe is that the event seems completely ultra vires in respect of what the EPO is actually supposed to be doing. National patent offices may have a wider mandate to foster innovation, to promote intellectual property generally, and to raise the profile of patenting, but the EPO most emphatically does not. At best, it is a distraction, and an apparently costly one at that, from the EPO's legally defined role.

But this Kat thinks that it is worse than that. The European Inventor Award is about ranking inventions. Publicly proclaiming that one invention (the winner) has more merit than others (the runners up and those that were not even nominated). This is actually contrary to the EPO's role as a body that grants patents, in which role (its only legally ceded role) it is bound to judge any invention against the objective standards of novelty and inventive step, irrespective of merit with respect to any other invention. Others are free to opine that one invention is "better" or has more worth than another, but the EPO should be quite disinterested in this. Its involvement with such an event tarnishes its objectivity.

[...]

The European Inventor Award is at best an expensive distraction, and at worse a dangerous compromise of principle.


This is probably the least worrisome among the EPO's wasteful uses of its budget. In a matter of days we are going to write more about how EPO management attacks the media (to force it to only say nice things about the EPO, or nothing a all). EPO management has the pervasive illusion of omnipotence; its behaviour proves that it thinks it can do whatever it wants. It is this arrogance and resultant abuse that a vast number of EPO employees are protesting against. The EPO should be held accountable by its shareholders, i.e. the European public, but EPO management is now greedy and self-serving to the extreme.

"The European Patent Office is an executive organisation, it deals especially with patent applicants, as such, its view of the world may be biased. As an executive organisation, its interpretative powers are very limited. The European Patent Convention excludes computer programs, it is outside the EPO's power to change this."

--Ante Wessels



Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 01/10/2023: Climate, Patents, Programming, and More
Links for the day
Apple and Microsoft Problems
half a dozen links
Malware in the Ubuntu Snap Store, Thanks to Canonical Bloatware Mindset
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Gemini Rising
There are 3523 capsules
Richard Stallman Gave a Talk Yesterday, Will Give Another Talk Today, and Will Give Two More Talks in Germany Later This Week
Those cover at least 2 different topics
Beware the Microsoft Sharks
We won't forgive and forget
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 30, 2023
IRC logs for Saturday, September 30, 2023
Don't be Afraid of the Command Line, It Might Even be a Friend
There's a tendency to think that only graphical interfaces were made to simplify usage, and any declarative interface is by design raw, inherently unfit for usage
One Positive Note About GNU/Linux Coverage in 2023 (Less Microsoft)
GNU/Linux users do not want this, with very rare exceptions
Snaps Were Never Good at Security, But the Media Coverage is Just Appalling
The media should focus on culling Windows, not making a huge fuss over minor things wrongly attributed to "Linux"
Better Footage of Richard Stallman's Talk Last Week: “Freedom in computing, forty years after starting to really protect it”
Richard Stallman speaks about the cancer situation early in his speech
Links 30/09/2023: A Government Shutdown and More Blizzard Layoffs
Links for the day
Links 30/09/2023: Bing Almost Offloaded Due to Failure/Losses, Nvidia Raided
Links for the day
A Lot of Technological 'Progress' Has Been Nothing But Buzzwords
Free software does not try to excite people people over nothing
Community is the Lifeblood of Freedom in the GNU/Linux World
Removing or undoing the "cancerd" (systemd) is feasible but increasingly difficult
Proprietary Software: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
Proprietary software has an entirely different mindset, revolving around business models rather than science
Web Hostnames Down to Lowest Number in More Than 7 Years!
the number of hostnames is falling rapidly (they hide this by choosing logarithmic scale)
Over at Tux Machines...
2 days' worth
Richard Stallman Says He Will Probably Live Many More Years
"Richard Stallman has cancer. Fortunately it is slow-growing and manageable follicular lymphona, so he will probably live many more years nonetheless. But he now has to be even more careful not to catch Covid-19."
Quitting 'Clown Computing' and GAFAM is Only the Start
The Web and the Net at large became far too centralised
Stop Begging Companies That Don't Value Your Freedom to Stop Pushing You Around
That's not freedom
They Say Free Software is Like Communism When They, the Proprietary Software Giants, Constantly Pursue Government Bailouts (Subsidies From Taxpayers)
At the moment Ukraine is at most risk due to its dependence on Microsoft (inside its infrastructure)
Social Control Media Has No Future, It Was Always Doomed to Fail (Also Promoted Based on Lies)
Recent events, including developments at Twitter, meant that they lost a lot of their audience and then, in turn, sponsors/advertisers
The forbidden topics
There are forbidden topics in the hacker community
They're Been Trying to 'Kill' Richard Stallman for Years (by Mentally Tormenting Him)
Malicious tongue wanted to do him what had been done to Julian Assange
We Temporarily Have Two Gemini Capsules
They're both authentic and secure, but they're not the same
Consumerism is Lying and Revisionism
We need to reject these liars and charlatans
Links 30/09/2023: Open VFS Framework, CrossOver 23.5, Dianne Feinstein Dies
Links for the day
Security Leftovers
GNU/Linux, Microsoft, and more
Microsoft Down on the World Wide Web, Shows Survey
down by a lot in this category
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 29, 2023
IRC logs for Friday, September 29, 2023
A Society That Fails Journalists Does Not Deserve Journalism
It's probably too later to save Julian Assange as a working publisher (he might never recover from the mental torture), but as a person and a father we can wish and work towards his release
Almost Nothing To Go With Your Morning's Cup Of Coffee
Newspaper? What newspaper?
Techrights Was Right About the Chaff Bots (They Failed to Live up to Their Promise)
Those who have been paying attention to news of substance rather than fashionable "tech trends" probably know that GNU/Linux grew a lot this year
Selling Out to Microsoft Makes You Dead Beef
If all goes as well as we've envisioned, Microsoft will get smaller and smaller
Curation and Preservation Work
The winter is coming soon and this means our anniversary is near
Mobile Phones Aren't Your Friend or a Gateway to Truly Social Life
Newer should not always seem more seductive, as novelty is by default questionable and debatable
Links 29/09/2023: Disinformation and Monopolies
Links for the day
iFixit Requests DMCA Exemption…To Figure Out How To Repair McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Jim Zemlin Thinks the World's Largest Software Company Has 200 Staff, Many of Whom Not Technical at All
biggest ego in the world
Microsoft GitHub Exposé — In the Alex Graveley Case, His Lawyer, Rick Cofer, Appears to Have Bribed the DA to Keep Graveley (and Others) Out of Prison
Is this how one gets out of prison? Hire the person who bribes the DA?
Richard Stallman's Public Talk in GNU's 40th Anniversary Ceremony
Out now
Links 29/09/2023: Linux Foundation Boasting, QLite FDW 2.4.0 Released
Links for the day
Red Hat Does Not Understand Community and It's Publicly Promoting Microsoft's Gartner
RedHat.com is basically lioning a firm that has long been attacking GNU/Linux in the private and public sectors at the behest of Microsoft
A 'Code of Conduct' Typically Promoted by Criminal Corporations to Protect Crimes From Scrutiny
We saw this in action last week
Objections to binutils CoC
LXO response to proposed Code of Conduct
Conde Nast (Reddit), Which Endlessly Defamed Richard Stallman and Had Paid Salaries to Microsoft-Connected Pedophiles, Says You Must Be Over 18 to See 'Stallman Was Right'
Does this get in the way of their Bill Gates-sponsored "Bill Gates says" programme/schedule?
Techrights Extends Wishes of Good Health to Richard M. Stallman
Richard Stallman has cancer
endsoftwarepatents.org Still Going, Some Good News From Canada
a blow to software patents in Canada
The Debian Project Leader said the main thing Debian lacked was more contributors
The Debian Project Leader said the main thing Debian lacked was more contributors
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 28, 2023
IRC logs for Thursday, September 28, 2023
Links 28/09/2023: Openwashing and Patent Spam as 'News'
Links for the day